HVDC Link Power Quality Improvement using A Modified Active Power Filter

Rakan Kh. Antar

Technical College /Mosul Foundation of Technical Education Mosul, Iraq rakanpe@yahoo.com

Basil M. Saied
Electrical Engineering Department University of Mosul Mosul, Iraq basilms2005@yahoo.com

Rafid A. Khalil
Mechatronics Engineering Department University of Mosul Mosul, Iraq rafidamori@yahoo.com

Ghanim A. Putrus
School of Computing, Engineering, and Information Sciences University of Northumbria Newcastle upon Tyne, UK ghanim.putrus@northumbria.ac.uk

Abstract- Converters and nonlinear loads absorb reactive power and produce harmonics on both sides of the d.c. transmission systems. The demand of reactive power and harmonics cancelation are usually met by employing passive and active power filters. In this paper, a conventional passive filter and a new active power filter topology are suggested in order to improve the power quality of the d.c. transmission systems. The nonlinear application chosen here is the 12-pluse Line Commutated Converter High Voltage D.C. (LCC-HVDC) link. The passive filter is tuned at fixed harmonic and constant transmitted d.c. power while the active power filter is dynamically controlled for different values of d.c. power flow through the transmission line. To effectively control the active power filter, a modified harmonic pulse width modulation algorithm is suggested in order to minimize the source harmonics and force the a.c. source current to be in-phase with the a.c. mains. Comparison of simulation results using MATLAB/SIMULINK show that the suggested active filter is effective for transient and steady-state operating conditions. Keywords Passive power filter, active power filter, Power quality improvement, 12-pulse LCC-HVDC.

commutated high voltage d.c. (12-pulse LCC-HVDC) link under different loading conditions. Also a conventional passive power filter is designed, implemented and compared with a new active power filter topology, modified APF. Passive filter and modified APF (MAPF) have been used to compensate the effective power factor and also reduce the THD at both ac sides of the 12-pulse LCC-HVDC link. This is performed for a wide range of dc power flow in the transmission line.

II.

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION CIRCUIT

I. INTRODUCTION Power electronics converters operating in rectification and inversion modes can provide flexibility of controlling active power. However, this flexibility is at the cost of increasing the difficulties in controlling the reactive power and generating a large number of harmonic components. Passive power filters (PPF) have been used to minimize the effective harmonic components and compensate reactive power, which is limited by the large cost and space requirements. Also, power electronic converters are sensitive to the operating conditions, such as temperature and variation of system configuration. The active power filters (APF) provides flexible control and can be tuned to adapt to changes in system frequency and impedance [1]. Therefore, they have better filtering performance than passive power filters. The I.cos algorithm used by [2, 3 and 4], for nonlinear loads, is a control system of the shunt active power filter. In this paper, the I.cos algorithm is modified to work with active power filter for different nonlinear loads. The modified I.cos algorithm is used as a controller for the shunt active power filter to improve the power quality of the 12-pulse line

Modelling, validation and testing of the 12-pulse monopolar LCC-HVDC link is conducted to ensure that the performance of the HVDC system is closely related to the real system. An overview of the system setup in Matlab/Simulink is shown in Fig. 1. The system modelled is a 500 kV 1000 MW d.c. link, which connects two 345 kV and 500 kV a.c. systems through a 300 km transmission line with 0.5 H smoothing reactor [5]. The desired power levels rated 1000 MW (2 kA, 500 kV) are determined by the voltage and current levels in the d.c. lines. The control system at both the sending (rectifier) and receiving (inverter) sides are modelled according to VdId characteristic of a two terminal LCC HVDC system. The desired power levels transmitted through the transmission line are determined by the voltage and current levels in the d.c. lines. The d.c. voltages are kept constant and determined by the a.c. voltages and firing angles of the converter bridges while the current levels are chosen manually as a reference between 0.3pu (0.6 kA) and 1.0pu (2 kA). Therefore, the steady-state dc power transmitted can be varied between 0.3pu (300MW) and 1.0pu (1000MW). A. Rectifier Control System The rectifier d.c. voltage is fed to the voltage dependent current order limiter (VDCOL), whose output (Id-ref) is compared to the rectifier dc line current (Idr). The error (Ierror = Idr - Id-ref) is fed to the PI controller. The output of the PI controller is converted to the rectifier firing angle, which is equal to 190 at normal steady-state firing angle of the rectifier.

Rectifier Controller MAPF Controller

Inverter Controller
Discrete, Ts = 1e-005 s.

the difference between the actual load currents (IL) and the desired mains currents for the three phases.

Measurements

ia Comp = I La i sa ref
a2

(1) (2) (3)

500kV, 50 Hz
A B C A B C A B C

Lac
A B C

A b2 c2 B a3 b3 C c3

Ay By Cy Ad Bd Cd +
TL 300 Km

Ay By Cy Ad + Bd Cd

a2 b2 c2 B a3 b3 c3
C B

A
A

Lac
A B C

345kV, 50 Hz
A A

ib Comp = I Lb i sb ref i c Comp = I Lc i sc ref

Where

Yg-Y-D

12-pulse Rectifier

12-pulse Inverter

Yg-D-Y

Modified Active Power Filter (MAPF)

Modified Active Power Filter (MAPF)

isa ref = I La1( real ) * sin( wt )

isb ref = I Lb1( real ) * sin( wt 120 )
0

(4) (5) (6)

Passive Power Filter

Passive Power Filter

Fig. 1 System overview with passive and active power filters.

iscref = I Lc1( real ) * sin(wt + 1200 )

B. Inverter Control System The inverter control system is based on voltage control or constant extinction angle (CEA) and current control. The current controller is only active during the system startup and during a fault until normal operation of the d.c. line has resumed. Under normal operation the inverter firing angle inverter is determined by the CEA controller. The input of VDCOL is inverter d.c. voltage (Vdi) and the output is reference current (Id-ref), which is compared with the inverter d.c. current (Idi). The current error (Idi - Id-ref) and the voltage error (Vdi Vd-ref) are fed to the individual PI controllers. The output of each PI controller is the firing angle of the inverter. The normal steady state extinction angle of the inverter is almost constant at 24 by the inverter CEA controller. III. FILTER DESIGN FOR A 12-PULSE LCC-HVDC LINK A. Conventional PPF The reactive power consumption is proportional to the load variation, therefore PPF is usually used to inject leading reactive power equal to the reactive power of the converter. The waveforms of HVDC converter have a large percentage of distortion at lower-order harmonics. So, single-tuned and high-pass filters are used to eliminate the 11th, 13th and 23rd order harmonic components of the 12-pulse LCC-HVDC link. B. Modified Active Power Filter (MAPF) The proposed MAPF shown in Fig. 2 is a three-phase 2level voltage source inverter (VSI) connected at the sending and receiving ends of the 12-pluse LCC-HVDC link through transformers. A dc capacitor is connected at the dc side of the VSI to keep the voltage constant at the dc bus. The MAPF that designed and implemented according to modified I.cos algorithm, modified harmonic PWM (MHPWM), is used to compensate harmonics and reactive power. Therefore it is considered as harmonics injector and power factor corrector (STATCOM-APF system). In the proposed MHPWM algorithm, the desired mains current (isa-ref, isb-ref, isc-ref) is deduced from the product of the real part of the fundamental load currents (ILa1(real), ILb1(real), ILc1(real)) and a unity sinusoidal wave in phase with the mains voltage. The reference compensation currents (ia-Comp, ib-Comp, ic-Comp) are computed as

The compensation currents are compared with MAPF currents and the results, harmonics error signal (HES), are used as reference current signals for the PWM model. The HES is compared with a triangle signal to produce PWM signals to drive the IGBT's of the MAPF as shown in Fig. 2. IV. RESULTS The designed MAPF is simulated to demonstrate its steady-state and dynamic capabilities for HVDC system. The rectifier controller controls Idc at certain value while inverter controller keeps Vdc constant at rated value to minimize the losses in the transmission line. The steady-state behaviour of the supply phase voltage (Vsa) and current (Isa) at the primary side of the LCC-HVDC link without filter, with PPF and with MAPF are shown in Figs. 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The d.c. power transmitted (Pdc) from one side to another is the reference signal for the control system. These results, at Pdc equal to 0.9pu, show that the phase voltage and current at both sides are in phase with each other, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MAPF. Also the supply voltage and current are almost free from harmonics. The noise in the voltage and current waveforms shown in Fig. 5 is due to switching frequency of the inverter IGBTs and this can be eliminated by using a simple high pass filter. Fig. 6 shows the THD in the input current with and without the filters. It can be seen that both filters give better results and both of them are within IEEE standards. The distortion power at a.c. sides, Fig. 7, proves the effectiveness of both filters.

Fig. 2 The proposed MAPF.

Fig. 8 illustrates the waveform of the input power factor for a wide range of dc power flow in the transmission line with and without filters at both sides of LCC-HVDC link. The PPF gives lagging power factor at certain Pdc and leading power factor at other values. This is due to the characteristics of the PPF that is tuned at fixed harmonic order and at certain Pdc (0.8pu). It needs to be retuned when Pdc varied between 0.1pu to 1.0pu. While MAPF provides a unity power factor at both a.c. sides of the LCC-HVDC link for a wide range of Pdc. Therefore, the MAPF performs better than the PPF. Another result that demonstrates the effectiveness of the MAPF is shown in Fig. 9. This figure shows the change in reactive power (QP) at the a.c. sides with and without the filters at sending and receiving sides respectively. It can be seen that QP without and with PPF changed linearly with Pdc and MAPF gives values of QP around zero. Thus, the MAPF performance is better for different loads. At constant apparent power (800MVA) supplied by a.c. mains of the sending side without and with MAPF, QP and distortion power are decreased by 96.5% and 75.5% in the rectifier side respectively. Also the value of real power is increased by about 6.27%. While in the inverter side, QP and distortion power are decreased by 99.23% and 84.23%. But the value of the real power is increased by 2.2%. In addition, the value of power factor is increased by about 6.33% (0.9994 Lag) and 8.43% (0.9997 Lead) in the rectifier and inverter side while total harmonic distortion (THD) decreased by 72.39% and 81.38% in the rectifier and inverter side respectively. The transmission efficiency decreased by 4.16% and Pdc increased by 4.43%.

6000

Vsa/50 (V) Isa (A)

4000

2000

-2000

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0.005

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0.015

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(b) Fig. 3 Primary phase voltage and current of HVDC Link without filters at Pdc equal to 0.9pu at (a): sending side (b): receiving side
6000

Vsa/70 (V)
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(b) Fig. 4 Primary phase voltage and current of HVDC Link with Passive Power Filters at Pdc equal to 0.9pu at (a): sending side (b): receiving side

8000

16

Vsa/70 (V)
6000 4000 2000 0 -2000
6 14

Isa (A)

12

THD %

10

without Filters PPF MAPF-Tr

-4000 -6000 -8000

4

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(a)
8000 6000 4000 2000 0 -2000 -4000 -6000 -8000

Pdc (pu)
(b) Fig. 6 THD of the supply current of HVDC link without and with filters simulated at (a) sending Side (b) receiving Side
0.16 0.14 without Filters PPF-A MAPF-Tr-A

Vsa/50 (V) Isa (A)

) Distortion Power (p (pu)

0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 0.2

(b) Fig. 5 Primary phase voltage and current of HVDC Link with MAPF at Pdc equal to 0.9pu at (a): sending side (b): receiving side
16

0.3

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Pdc (pu)
(a)
0.16 0.14 0.12 without Filters PPF-H MAPF-Tr-H

14

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THD %

10

without Filters PPF-A MAPF-Tr-A

0.1 0.08

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(a)

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Pdc (pu)
(b) Fig. 7 Distortion power without and with filters at (a) sending side and (b) receiving side of HVDC link.

1 0.8

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without Filters PPF-H MAPF-Tr-H

0.6

Power Factor (PF)

0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4

Reactive Power (pu)

without Filters PPF-A MAPF-Tr-A

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Lagging PF

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1 0.8 0.6

without Filters PPF MAPF-Tr

(b) Fig. 9 Simulation results of Reactive Power without and with filters at (a) sending and (b) receiving sides.

V. CONCLUSIONS The main objective of this paper is to present a new improved active power filter that is suitable for HVDC applications. A computer model for the MAPF topology and its control algorithm has been built and implemented successfully. The proposed MAPF can effectively reduce the level of harmonics generated and correct the power factor for a wide range of dc power flow, displaying a far superior performance than that of a passive power filter. Passive and active power filters results are within IEEE standards for a certain value of dc power flow. But for different values of dc power flow, the MAPF performs better. The MAPF concept has been shown to be effective and suitable for practical implementation.
VI.

Power Factor (PF)

0.4 0.2 0

-0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 0.2

0.3

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Pdc (pu)

0.6

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(b) Fig. 8 Simulation results of input power factor of HVDC link without and with filters at (a) sending Side (b) receiving Side
0.4 without Filters PPF-A MAPF-Tr-A

REFERENCES

0.3

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0.1

-0.1

-0.2

[1] Huang Zhenhua, Chen Jianye, Su Ling, Wang Zanji, and Wang Yi," A Digital Controller of Hybrid Filter Based on Pseudo-Inverse Filtering Technique", IEEE/PES Transmission and Distribution Conference & Exhibition: Asia and Pacific Dalian, China, 2005. [2] Charles.S and G. Bhuvaneswari, "Comparison of Three Phase Shunt Active Power Filter Algorithms", International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 1, page 175-180, 1793-8163, February, 2010. [3] G. Bhuvaneswari and Manjula G. Nair, Design, Simulation, and Analogue Circuit Implementation of a Three-Phase Shunt Active Filter Using the Icos Algorithm, IEEE Transactions on power delivery, volume 23, Issue 2, Page(s):1222-1235, April 2008. [4] K. Sebasthi Rani and K. Porkumaran, "Multilevel Shunt Active Filter based on Sinusoidal Subtraction Methods under Different Load Conditions", IEEE Region 8 SIBIRCON, July 11-15, 2010. [5] Mohamed KHATIR, Sid Ahmed Zidi, Samir Hadjeri, and Mohammed Karim Fellah," Analysis of Recovery form Commutation Faults in an HVDC Inverter Connected to a Weak Receiving ac System", ISSN 1335- 8243 FEI TUKE, Vol. 8, No. 1, 44 50, 2008.
0.5

Reactive Power (pu)

-0.3 0.2

0.3

0.4

Pdc (pu)
(a)

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0.9